Face To Face With The Congo (1)

As I wrote in my Daily Guide column on 12 January 2019, my fascination with the Democratic Republic of Congo dates back a long time. (See: Let Us Pray For Peace In The Democratic Republic Of Congo!)

My fascination began in mid-1961. I had just become editor of the Ghana edition of a general-purpose magazine called Drum. It had the deceptive reputation of being “superficial”, just because it always had a very beautiful girl on the cover. Also, its most well-read section consisted of an explicit discussion of social – and sexual – problems served up by readers for solution by a seemingly all-knowing agony aunt called ‘Dolly’.

I was determined to camouflage a new, more serious outlook under the deceptive cover of its old persona. So I fearlessly covered some of the most fiercely controversial issues in Ghana at the time: ”What Is Socialism”? “How Can You Read Osagyefo's 'Consciencism' and Understand It”; “What Is The 'African Personality”; and that sort of thing. I was also interested in covering some of the important events that were creating a political cataclysm all over Africa, and toured the Rhodesias, where I interviewed Sir Roy Welensky, Prime Minister of the racist Federation of Rrhodesia and Nyasaland.

So, when the Ghana armed forces, having realised that the murder of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba by Moise Tshombe, the Katangese secessionist leader (whom we thought the Ghana army had gone to defeat) had rendered our army's presence in the Congo a nonsense in the eyes of many Ghanaians, invited the magazine to go and report on what the Ghanaian troops were actually doing there, I jumped at the chance.

Together with a brilliant photographer called Christian Gbagbo, I accompanied an excellent troupe of dancers, the Heatwaves, who were being sent to entertain the troops. The creator of the Heatwaves was a lovely choreographer and dancer, the late Beryl Karikari, [who was later to become my beloved wife!] Its band was led by a fantastic tenor saxophonist called Rex Ofosu.

l looked forward to the trip enormously because apart from the chance of gaining a fuller understanding of the socio-political situation in the Congo, I hoped to be able to enjoy Congolese guitar music, whose bug (as I noted in my earlier piece) had bitten me a few years before. I caught the bug from a friend of mine, the late Germain Mba, a nephew of the first president of Gabon, Leon Mba.

Germain was then working for the magazine, Jeune Afrique, based in Paris, and he had come to Accra to try and get the Ghana government to publish a special edition on Ghana. I was pointed in Germain's direction as someone who could write some of the Ghana articles, and he invited me to the terrace of the Ambassador Hotel, in Accra, for a drink one afternoon. When I got there, I found him enjoying one of the fabulous “club” sandwiches for which the Ambassador was then noted. He invited me to have one. .

Whilst we were eating and washing it down with beer, Germain took the liberty of turning on an enormous, battery-powered Grundig multi-shortwave radio that was standing by his chair. He tuned it to Radio Brazzaville. And out poured some heavenly guitar music. I learnt later that he had tuned it to the Les Disques Demande'e (Listeners’ Choice) programme of Radio Brazzaville, which played every afternoon the favourite music of millions of listeners stretching all the way from the two Congos, to Gabon and Cameroon, and as far west as the Ivory Coast, Dahomey (now Benin)and Togo. Only we in English-speaking West Africa were being leap-frogged by the magical guitar music strung from the fingers of such bands as ‘Franco and the OK Jazz’, ‘and Dr Nico and African Fiesta’, as well as other fabulous Congolese guitar bands, which had captured all of francophone Africa.

The Congolese music simply slew me at first 'sight', and ever since those days, I have been an aficionado. As a result, the moment I arrive in Paris or Brussels, my first task is to seek out the best music shop that specialises in Congolese music. I always leave the shops poorer than when I arrived.! One day, in Harare, I had the best of both worlds – the Congolese band Pepe Kalle came and played live in the hotel where I was staying! can still remember enchanting tunes of the 1960s like ‘Linda Linda’, ‘Independence cha cha cha’, ‘Si tu bois beaucoup’ and ‘Maria Chantal’. All these were, of course, sung in Lingala, a language I didn’t understand. But the music was so good that the lyrics became largely an irrelevance, as far as I was concerned.

I was recently delighted to discover that Maria Chantal was on YouTube:

My current favourite Congolese band is Soukous Stars. The band is unique because it has succeeded in seamlessly breaking the barriers between Congolese soukous/rumba music and West African hi-life. It has produced excellent numbers in Ghana’s Twi language, which can be found on a stupendous, amazing disc – Ghana Success Medley – found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tDMSkmLrUM

Soukous Stars has topped this by also producing a fine version of ‘Sweet mother’ by the late Nigerian singer, Prince Nico Mbargo. It has thus cemented its unassailable position as the only really Pan-African band of our era. Its version of ‘Sweet mother’ is at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvAuQJGs1b4

(TO BE CONTINUED)